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writingwithcolor · 3 years

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What Does Our "Motivations” PSA Mean?

@luminalalumini said:

I've been on your blog a lot and it has a lot of really insightful information, but I notice a theme with some of your answers where you ask the writer reaching out what their 'motivation for making a character a certain [race/religion/ethnicity/nationality] is' and it's discouraging to see, because it seems like you're automatically assigning the writer some sort of ulterior motive that must be sniffed out and identified before the writer can get any tips or guidance for their question. Can't the 'motive' simply be having/wanting to have diversity in one's work? Must there be an 'ulterior motive'? I can understand that there's a lot of stigma and stereotypes and bad influence that might lead to someone trynna add marginalized groups into their stories for wrong reasons, but people that have those bad intentions certainly won't be asking for advice on how to write good representation in the first place. Idk its just been something that seemed really discouraging to me to reach out myself, knowing i'll automatically be assigned ulterior motives that i don't have and will probably have to justify why i want to add diversity to my story as if i'm comitting some sort of crime. I don't expect you guys to change your blog or respond to this or even care all that much, I'm probably just ranting into a void. I'm just curious if theres any reason to this that I haven't realized exists I suppose. I don't want y'all to take this the wrong way because I do actually love and enjoy your blog's advice in spite of my dumb griping. Cheers :))

We assume this is in reference to the following PSA:

PSA to all of our users - Motivation Matters: This lack of clarity w/r to intent has been a general issue with many recent questions. Please remember that if you don’t explain your motivations and what you intend to communicate to your audience with your plot choices, character attributes, world-building etc., we cannot effectively advise you beyond the information you provide. We Are Not Mind Readers. If, when drafting these questions, you realize you can’t explain your motivations, that is likely a hint that you need to think more on the rationales for your narrative decisions. My recommendation is to read our archives and articles on similar topics for inspiration while you think. I will be attaching this PSA to all asks with similar issues until the volume of such questions declines.

We have answered this in three parts.

1. Of Paved Roads and Good Intentions

Allow me to give you a personal story, in solidarity towards your feelings:

When I began writing in South Asia as an outsider, specifically in the Kashmir and Lahore areas, I was doing it out of respect for the cultures I had grown up around. I did kathak dance, I grew up on immigrant-cooked North Indian food, my babysitters were Indian. I loved Mughal society, and every detail of learning about it just made me want more. The minute you told me fantasy could be outside of Europe, I hopped into the Mughal world with two feet. I was 13. I am now 28.

And had you asked me, as a teenager, what my motives were in giving my characters’ love interests blue or green eyes, one of them blond hair, my MC having red-tinted brown hair that was very emphasized, and a whole bunch of paler skinned people, I would have told you my motives were “to represent the diversity of the region.”

I’m sure readers of the blog will spot the really, really toxic and colourist tropes present in my choices. If you’re new here, then the summary is: giving brown people “unique” coloured eyes and hair that lines up with Eurocentric beauty standards is an orientalist trope that needs to be interrogated in your writing. And favouring pale skinned people is colourist, full stop.

Did that make me a bad person with super sneaky ulterior motives who wanted to write bad representation? No.

It made me an ignorant kid from the mostly-white suburbs who grew up with media that said brown people had to “look unique” (read: look as European as possible) to be considered valuable.

And this is where it is important to remember that motives can be pure as you want, but you were still taught all of the terrible stuff that is present in society. Which means you’re going to perpetuate it unless you stop and actually question what is under your conscious motive, and work to unlearn it. Work that will never be complete.

I know it sounds scary and judgemental (and it’s one of the reasons we allow people to ask to be anonymous, for people who are afraid). Honestly, I would’ve reacted much the same as a younger writer, had you told me I was perpetuating bad things. I was trying to do good and my motives were pure, after all! But after a few years, I realized that I had fallen short, and I had a lot more to learn in order for my motives to match my impact. Part of our job at WWC is to attempt to close that gap.

We aren’t giving judgement, when we ask questions about why you want to do certain things. We are asking you to look at the structural underpinnings of your mind and question why those traits felt natural together, and, more specifically, why those traits felt natural to give to a protagonist or other major character.

I still have blond, blue-eyed characters with sandy coloured skin. I still have green-eyed characters. Because teenage me was right, that is part of the region. But by interrogating my motive, I was able to devalue those traits within the narrative, and I stopped making those traits shorthand for “this is the person you should root for.”

It opened up room for me to be messier with my characters of colour, even the ones who my teenage self would have deemed “extra special.” Because the European-associated traits (pale hair, not-brown-eyes) stopped being special. After years of questioning, they started lining up with my motive of just being part of the diversity of the region.

Motive is important, both in the conscious and the subconscious. It’s not a judgement and it’s not assumed to be evil. It’s simply assumed to be unquestioned, so we ask that you question it and really examine your own biases.

~Mod Lesya

2. Motivations Aren't Always "Ulterior"

You can have a positive motivation or a neutral one or a negative one. Just wanting to have diversity only means your characters aren't all white and straight and cis and able-bodied -- it doesn't explain why you decided to make this specific character specifically bi and specifically Jewish (it me). Yes, sometimes it might be completely random! But it also might be "well, my crush is Costa Rican, so I gave the love interest the same background", or "I set it in X City where the predominant marginalized ethnicity is Y, so they are Y". Neither of these count as ulterior motives. But let's say for a second that you did accidentally catch yourself doing an "ulterior." Isn't that the point of the blog, to help you find those spots and clean them up?

Try thinking of it as “finding things that need adjusting” rather than “things that are bad” and it might get less scary to realize that we all do them, subconsciously. Representation that could use some work is often the product of subconscious bias, not deliberate misrepresentation, so there's every possibility that someone who wants to improve and do better didn't do it perfectly the first time.

--Shira

3. Dress-Making as a Metaphor

I want to echo Lesya’s sentiments here but also provide a more logistical perspective. If you check the rubber stamp guide here and the “Motivation matters” PSA above, you’ll notice that concerns with respect to asker motivation are for the purposes of providing the most relevant answer possible.

It is a lot like if someone walks into a dressmaker’s shop and asks for a blue dress/ suit (Back when getting custom-made clothes was more of a thing) . The seamstress/ tailor is likely to ask a wide variety of questions:

What material do you want the outfit to be made of?

Where do you plan to wear it?

What do you want to highlight?

How do you want to feel when you wear it?

Let’s say our theoretical customer is in England during the 1920s. A tartan walking dress/ flannel suit for the winter is not the same as a periwinkle, beaded, organza ensemble/ navy pinstripe for formal dress in the summer. When we ask for motivations, we are often asking for exactly that: the specific reasons for your inquiry so we may pinpoint the most pertinent information.

The consistent problem for many of the askers who receive the PSA is they haven’t even done the level of research necessary to know what they want to ask of us. It would be like if our English customer in the 1920s responded, “IDK, some kind of blue thing.” Even worse, WWC doesn’t have the luxury of the back-and-forth between a dressmaker and their clientele. If our asker doesn’t communicate all the information they need in mind at the time of submission, we can only say, “Well, I’m not sure if this is right, but here’s something. I hope it works, but if you had told us more, we could have done a more thorough job.”

Answering questions without context is hard, and asking for motivations, by which I mean the narratives, themes, character arcs and other literary devices that you are looking to incorporate, is the best way for us to help you, while also helping you to determine if your understanding of the problem will benefit from outside input. Because these asks are published with the goal of helping individuals with similar questions, the PSA also serves to prompt other users.

I note that asking questions is a skill, and we all start by asking the most basic questions (Not stupid questions, because to quote a dear professor, “There are no stupid questions.”). Unfortunately, WWC is not suited for the most basic questions. To this effect, we have a very helpful FAQ and archive as a starting point. Once you have used our website to answer the more basic questions, you are more ready to approach writing with diversity and decide when we can actually be of service. This is why we are so adamant that people read the FAQ. Yes, it helps us, but it also is there to save you time and spare you the ambiguity of not even knowing where to start.

The anxiety in your ask conveys to me a fear of being judged for asking questions. That fear is not something we can help you with, other than to wholeheartedly reassure you that we do not spend our unpaid, free time answering these questions in order to assume motives we can’t confirm or sit in judgment of our users who, as you say, are just trying to do better.

Yes, I am often frustrated when an asker’s question makes it clear they haven’t read the FAQ or archives. I’ve also been upset when uncivil commenters have indicated that my efforts and contributions are not worth their consideration. However, even the most tactless question has never made me think, “Ooh this person is such a naughty racist. Let me laugh at them for being a naughty racist. Let me shame them for being a naughty racist. Mwahaha.”

What kind of sad person has time for that?*

Racism is structural. It takes time to unlearn, especially if you’re in an environment that doesn’t facilitate that process to begin with. Our first priority is to help while also preserving our own boundaries and well-being. Though I am well aware of the levels of toxic gas-lighting and virtue signaling that can be found in various corners of online writing communities in the name of “progressivism*”, WWC is not that kind of space. This space is for discussions held in good faith: for us to understand each other better, rather than for one of us to “win” and another to “lose.”

Just as we have good faith that you are doing your best, we ask that you have faith that we are trying to do our best by you and the BIPOC communities we represent.

- Marika.

*If you are in any writing or social media circles that feed these anxieties or demonstrate these behaviors, I advise you to curtail your time with them and focus on your own growth. You will find, over time, that it is easier to think clearly when you are worrying less about trying to appease people who set the bar of approval so high just for the enjoyment of watching you jump. “Internet hygiene”, as I like to call it, begins with you and the boundaries you set with those you interact with online.

#PSAs #asker concerns #diversity #motivations in writing #writing with diversity #blog housekeeping #internet hygeine #asks #WWC

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volkswagonblues · 4 years

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a lil guide to the Fire Nation for the ATLA fic writers out there

(aka. a no means exhaustive primer on east asia by an asian person)

This is a guide for fic writers want to write a canon-era story set in the Fire Nation, or featuring Fire Nation characters. A quick little primer on the tiny details of everyday life that you might not think about, but certainly stuff that would make me, an asian person, wince if I were to encounter it. BRUSHES, not quills. CHOPSTICKS, not forks.

(note #1: this was partly inspired by a chat with @elilim)

(note: #2: I originally intended it for zukka fic writers before realizing that other writers might find it useful. so apologies for a slight Zuko-bias for that reason)

(note #3: this is all stuff i was thinking about when writing firebender’s guide, in case anyone was wondering)

1. CLOTHING

Okay, I think the most straightforward way to describe what everyone’s wearing most of the time is “tunic”. They’re all just...tunics of different colours and varieties. Later when Zuko’s the Fire Lord he wears robes. The show provides a better visual guide than I could, here are a few notes to keep in mind:

a) Japanese people wear their collars LEFT crossed over RIGHT

I don’t think this would come up in writing as much as it would in art, but it’s considered bad luck to do it the wrong way because that’s only for dead people. Let my boy Zuko demonstrate:

b) There are no buttons

This is picky, but Wikipedia says “Functional buttons with buttonholes for fastening or closing clothes appeared first in Germany in the 13th century.[6] They soon became widespread with the rise of snug-fitting garments in 13th- and 14th-century Europe.” I kinda believe it. If you look closely, characters’ clothes are always tied together or wrapped in some way with a belt. If there are fasteners, they’re braided frog closures that go into a little loop, like the qipao-style dresses women wear in Ba Sing Se, or Zuko’s casual prince’s clothes in the topmost image. Anyways, I don’t think Zuko or Azula or the Gaang would technically button or unbutton anything when they’re changing clothes. Clothing is designed to be tied, not buttoned.

[so much more under cut]

c) This isn’t a real rule, but there’s something called koromogae, or the seasonal changing of clothing in Japan.

This is something I learned when I was writing firebender’s guide, and I just liked the fun detail about there being a strict calendar for when to wear something. I liked the idea of someone like Zuko, who actually spent most of his formative years outside of the Fire Nation, coming home and just suffering mutely through the summer heat because upper class etiquette says no changing into cooler clothes until August 15.

From My Asakusa:

And this website:

Generally, people change from thick, heavy, dark-coloured clothes for winter to thin, lighter, bright-coloured clothes for spring and summer. In traditional Japanese culture, particularly in formal settings such as tea ceremony, it is important to acknowledge the changes of seasons—in such circumstances, not only the patterns and colours of the kimono that are worn but also the utensils and furniture that are used are required to change. By changing their clothing, people notice and appreciate the change of seasons. [Japan Foundation]

Here are some visual guides from the official creators for clothes: (notice how it’s pretty much always left over right)

2.FOOD AND EATING

a) Traditional cuisine

It seems like the most common foods in canon are Fire Flakes and meat, to the point where poor Aang had to eat lettuce out of the garbage at some point.

HOWEVER, the Fire Nation seems to basically a big subtropical archipelago, so I would guess that seafood and rice are common. If you want to write about characters eating, a. quick google for “traditional japanese cuisine” would help you come up with a menu really quickly.

Wikipedia says:

The traditional cuisine of Japan, washoku (和食), lit. "Japanese eating" (or kappō (ja:割烹)), is based on rice with miso soup and other dishes; there is an emphasis on seasonal ingredients. Side dishes often consist of fish, pickled vegetables, and vegetables cooked in broth. Seafood is common, often grilled, but also served raw as sashimi or in sushi.

But before we get too serious, at one point the Gaang eats a “smoked sea slug” (Sokka’s Master)

Oh ATLA, never stop being you.

b) Utensils

One thing to keep in mind is chopstick etiquette. Someone like Zuko or Toph, for instance, would have completely internalized all of these.

Another thing is that there are no glasses. Cups and bowls are made of ceramic or clay. Let the Gaang show you:

And another note: characters won’t eat “bread” in the European sense, ie. a baked lump of dough. Steamed buns, yes. Fried pancakes made from batter, yes. Flatbreads, okay I’ll give it a pass. Rice or noodles should be the most common carbs of choice.

3.ETIQUETTE

“In the homeland, we bow to our elders” - angry schoolmistress in The Headband.

Japan Guide has a list of etiquette rules for visiting Japan, which is interesting but not too necessary to read. In general, based on what The Headband tells us, Fire Nation characters would have been raised with a strong nationalist curriculum that values communal contribution over individualist expression. Even someone like Zuko, who openly rebels against that, probably couldn’t help but be affected by it. In general the Fire Nation seems to have an East Asian-ish set of values. It’s patriarchal, all the positions of authority are filled by men; there seems to be a strong emphasis on patriotism; there’s a sense of diffidence and respect towards one’s elders; and finally, there’s an emphasis on “knowing” one’s place in society and fitting into what’s expected of oneself.

I don’t really know how to describe it, but in China and Japan I sometimes feel like there’s rules for everything, and even people born and raised there acknowledge it could be stifling at times. You could go down a rabbit hole researching points of etiquette (for instance, rules on who has to sit where in group dinners...), but to me the most important thing is acknowledging that Fire Nation has a rigid system of etiquette, and also, they’re an imperialist power who’s pretty prejudiced against foreigners. Poor Aang/Kuzon gets called “mannerless colony slob” just for being slow on the bowing action (!!!)

(in firebender’s guide I had a lot of fun imagining the stupid microaggressions Ambassador Sokka has to face in the Fire Nation, so obviously I’m just biased)

4.WRITING AND DESKS

Characters would probably write on paper, with a calligraphy brush. Not quills or pens -- a brush. Technically, old Japanese and Chinese texts should be written top to bottom, right to left, but the show itself doesn’t do this, so I think you’re fine.

One fun thing about traditional calligraphy is that you don’t use bottled ink. You have something called an ink stone, and then you grind your ink yourself by rubbing the ink stone in a special little dish with a bit of water. In my (very few) encounters with this stuff in the calligraphy lessons of my youth, the ink stones can be plain or have beautiful designs on the side. It looks something like this:

ATLA is an East Asian-ish universe, so characters are likely to be kneeling at a table, not sitting. To demonstrate, here’s my boy Sokka doing his famous rainbow at Piandao’s:

and here’s the war chamber meeting when Zuko speaks out against a general’s plans to sacrifice some soldiers:

THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS: This is Zuko’s cute little setup when he’s writing his goodbye letter to Mai. In this case he’s writing in a chair and table. It’s possible that some furniture items, like a sitting desk and a bed in a bedframe (not a bedroll or futon) are special royal palace features. Normally in a private setting we see characters sitting on the ground or on a slightly elevated platform with a low table. Maybe Caldera is just different? Or rich people are just different: the Bei Fongs also have a sit-down dining table + chair setup.

(That little rectangular box is his ink dish!!)

5.A NOTE ON GENERAL CULTURE

It’s worth talking about a few general points of East Asian culture. I can’t claim to speak for ALL of Asia, and I don’t think I should. But I do think ATLA fic writers who want to set something in the Fire Nation should take a few moments to at least skim the wiki pages for filial piety and Nihonjinron (literally, "theories/discussions about the Japanese"). There’s a certain...vibe to...asianness... that I’m not sure I can explain without like, a doctorate degree in sociology.

It’s a bit like gender, I guess. There’s no definitive checklist to what is a woman and what is a man, and we can argue that gender is performative, that it’s a construct, but at the end of the day gender is still (tragically) real in the sense that it still shapes people and affects how we walk and talk and dress and think. Nationality is the same. Obviously, the Fire Nation is a made up place in a made up show, but out of respect to the cultures that inspired it, I do think it’s worth familiarizing yourself with some of these cultures’ codes and values.

Also, ahem, if I can direct you to war crimes in the Japan’s colonial empire. Again, worth remembering that the Fire Nation was an imperalist colonizer too.

I might do a continuation of this post and talk through my more abstract takes about Fire Nation culture - Is Zuko an example of filial piety gone right or filial piety gone wrong? Why I think Zuko’s flashbacks are like, at least part teenage melodrama bullshit (the reason is son preference), how someone like Sokka might be treated once he’s openly Water Tribe in the Fire Nation (probably with racism...), specific aspects of asian homophobia and racism, etc. We’ll see.

This is not a definitive guide. Comments and critique welcome.

If you think there’s a factual mistake, PLEASE hop in my asks and let me know. I also think there’s a huge blind spot in ATLA for South and Southeast Asian representation, so I acknowledge that I can’t speak for all Asians, and there is no such thing as a “pan-asian” identity.

If there’s something else you’re curious about, I’m not a historian or anything, but I like research. Ask me and I’ll try to answer the best I can.

And oh, one last thing, this is how I do research when I wrote firebender’s guide, in case anyone’s interested in learning more (LINK)

#Avatar The Last Airbender #zukka #atla fic #my fic #fire nation

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justalads · 3 years

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was l’manburg (and c!wilbur) xenophobic?

xenophobia: fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign

short answer: not really? it depends on a few things.

(all c! and /rp unless specified)

we’re bringing out the geopolitical roleplay analysis today!

before i get into the xenophobia discussion, actually, i want to go down a bit of a side track: the take that the people of l’manburg were colonizers. i don’t think it’s a lot of people who say this, but whenever people list “colonizer” as something that wilbur is, it always confuses me a little, as someone who watched the majority of season one live. there are two definitions for “colonizer”:

(note: i’m going to be using dictionary definitions for most of these. this is purely in order to give the benefit of the doubt to people that use these words wrong. the definition of these terms that people generally accept often is slightly different, and holds more implications.)

1: a country that sends settlers to a place and establishes political control over it

2. a plant or animal that establishes itself in an area

so, to be fair, the second definition does fit l’manburg. because it fits everyone on the server. everyone showed up and established themselves in the area. but if people are using that definition, why are we calling exclusively wilbur a colonizer and nobody else? why not the people who took land for their houses, when that was considered completely fine by everyone else? wouldn’t that make dream the biggest colonizer of them all? the definition that people seem to be implying is more of a “moved into an area and took political control over it.” the question would then be: was the land of l’manburg previously inhabited? was there anything there before l’manburg? because “colonizing” something in the negative sense usually means there was already someone there. the people saying this are using it in the negative sense, because if they were not why would they use it at all and specifically to wilbur?

it could be argued that the land was “dream’s” land, because it was his server, but then that calls into question his ownership over it at all, and whether or not it was legitimate. if dream “owns” the land of the smp, does he own the entire server? if someone goes out a million blocks, is that still “his” land? and why is it his? what gives him a right to it?

it could also be argued that the land everywhere belonged to the server, as in everyone had equal claim to it all. however, nobody really had a problem in the past with anyone going “this is my house” or “this is my land”. in fact, the land that became l’manburg was kind of wilbur’s house (if you go back to the hot dog van stream, he says that he built it and he “lives” there.) nobody was there before him. it was his own space that he picked out of all the land. nobody on the server had any sort of previous attachment to the land, and there was nothing important there that everyone needed. the land was free. this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often in real life, because populations are usually already living in places that get colonized. this is not true for minecraft. another definition of colonization is this:

“colonization, or colonisation refers to large-scale population movements where the migrants maintain strong links with their or their ancestors' former country, gaining significant privileges over other inhabitants of the territory by such links.” basically, you can’t “colonize” your own land. l’manburg didn’t have any sort of real privilege over the other people on the server (they tried to enforce the rules but because they were physically weaker they were disregarded). while the word colonizer can apply in one definition to everyone, it is then kind of weird to use it just for wilbur, because it implies that he fits the other definition when he does not. the misuse of this word has become prevalent again, with fans on both sides of the las nevadas/snowchester outpost calling the other side colonizers. both of these accusations are incorrect. so then, why did wilbur disallow americans from going into his country? why did he establish that rule, and doesn’t it show him taking “political control” over an area and denying others equal rights? doesn’t that paint him as a little iffy? does the “no americans” rule make him xenophobic?

again, not really? it’s sort of complicated.

the circumstances under which l’manburg was created are roughly outlined at about 1:47:23 in tommy’s vod “ TommyInnit & WilburSoot discuss their Empire Plans in Dream's Server.”

(bold is wilbur, italics are tommy)

“have you noticed something about the issue last time? when we were trying to just, you know, trying to get blaze rods and stuff. do you know what the issue was?”

“what was the issue?”

“right, so think of all the people that were good to us.”

“tubbo.”

“eret. fundy. tubbo, right? what do they all have in common?”

“they’re all weak. weaker than us.”

“they’re all european, tommy. i’m thinking we build a wall to keep out the americans.”

“yeah?”

“we’re gonna build a wall, on the server, and the americans are gonna pay for it. and we’re gonna keep them out of our land. because they— ruin bits.” (laughs)

“cause they ruin bits?”

“no, no, no, they just, we need to get rid of them. we need to keep them out.”

“okay.”

“so i’m thinking we build this wall, right. we get fundy involved— well okay, first thing we do, we rob the americans for materials to build the wall.”

“if we do that, the second we do that, they’re gonna stab us and put us in jail and claim that they’ve won again. they’ve won the war.”

“look, they can keep doing that, over and over again— the wall’s getting built. so we build this wall, right? and then what we can do in this wall?”

“what?”

“it’s our territory. we can make as many drugs as we want. the police have no jurisdiction on us there.”

“okay.”

——

“so tomorrow, we’re gonna build a drug empire?”

“well— no, we’re just gonna make a country? and then the drugs will be legal in the country.”

“how do you know that sapnap’s not gonna… i don’t know. you know what they’re like, man, how do we know they’re not gonna… make it a war?”

“the thing is, right. how i see it is they can declare war, they can do whatever they want, but like. if we just ignore them and don’t acknowledge it, we win. we can’t lose.”

“yeah, but they’ll just kill us. because that is what happened last time.”

“we just don’t acknowledge them. ignore them.”

“yeah, but there’s only so much ignoring you can do when— yeah, alright, alright.”

“and then we win. we can’t lose, possibly.”

“we make them pay, for what they’ve done wrong.”

so the goal is to… make drugs. because drugs are against the law of the server, and they’re going to get the freedom to do drugs by making their own country, where the police can’t get them. they want to keep the americans out because as wilbur said, the europeans of the server were good to them. they keep talking about how the americans might hurt them. experiences with the americans of the server has left these two with a bias against them.

the plans to steal materials for the wall are a parallel to the american border wall, maybe less of a parallel and more of a reference/joke since many of these words were never acted upon and the circumstances for these two things are different in an important way. that’s why legitimate comparisons of the american border wall and a roleplay between americans and europeans are not great: it disrespectfully equates two situations. wilbur and tommy joke about the wall throughout the first couple of streams. the aversion to americans that they have is sort of unearned for what they have done to the europeans at this point in time.

the thing with drawing parallels between l’manburg and real life situations is that we have to take into consideration the power dynamics of the server. dream, sapnap and punz had a lot of power at this point simply because they had a lot of tools and armor. l’manburg had pretty much nothing. so why is the country created? one, to escape a law that they deem unnecessary, and to avoid being put in jail. two, because they have a negative view of the americans, and they want a place where they won’t be hurt by them. tommy says the thing about revenge, but nobody ever acts on it. it’s about safety.

since the prejudice is there, i would say their words here alone could be considered xenophobic? i’m unsure, because it would be more of the “fear” part of the definition than the “hatred” part. the americans did do things to tommy and wilbur. their beliefs are not entirely unfounded. and then, of course, there’s the fact that once they begin to build the nation, the dynamic shifts entirely.

like i said before, the americans hold most of the power in the situation. once the action starts and the americans begin to poke at the new country, their actions are harming the people there, therefore solidifying in wilbur and tommy’s minds that the americans want to hurt them. a story of “americans hurt people and the people they hurt want to get away from them” does not generally cast the people who want freedom as xenophobic.

the americans do engage in acts of tyranny on the people of l’manburg. cruel treatment of citizens and no citizen input in the laws of the land fall under that definition. so at this point, we have people who are being harmed by their government. the refusal of independence and the unjust treatment define the americans as oppressors.

oppression: prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control

when in history, we see those who were oppressed by americans (or anyone for that matter! the sides of american and european do not really matter here, the point is the conflict and relationship between the groups) we see their dislike and fear of the other group as justified, not xenophobic. when people and systems in real life are xenophobic, i feel as if the fear is more of a hatred and the basis for the hostility is misguided. those prejudices are also held with a sense of superiority over those they deem “lesser”, not fear of them (although fear can be a motivator for actions). the xenophobia is often held up by systemic power differences.

if wilbur’s belief that the americans would hurt them was misguided, the americans should have done something to show them that. wilbur clearly expressed to the americans that he thought they were tyrannical and cruel, and they waged war upon him and his people, when they were pretty much defenseless. so then my question is what’s the point of calling them xenophobic, when their enemies were their oppressors?

it’s like calling him a colonizer: sure, it’s true in a sense, but the way people use it is misleading, and it’s a heavy word thrown at a delicate situation. its untruth or exaggerated truth makes it slanderous rather than genuine and critical analysis. revolution is produced by injustice, whether real or imagined. it is hard for revolutions with imagined injustices to be successful, as the cause is not appealing. the injustice became even more real once the people of l’manburg expressed the desire to be independent, and were further harmed.

making comparisons to real life things can be useful, but we should also be careful with how we do it. xenophobia and colonization are things that dramatically impact the lives of those oppressed, and while it’s not exactly directly harmful to those people to say something kind of stupid about a minecraft roleplay (this isn’t twitter, this isn’t something to be “cancelled” over in the slightest and i’m not trying to do that, just talking politics) it does show that people either misinterpret or want to shift the narrative of a political situation. basically, it doesn’t really mean anything, but if someone’s going to call c!wilbur xenophobic, they should think for a minute about why he had that prejudice.

lastly, the words “tyranny” and “dictator” are also extremely misused. people who want to do political analysis should know what the words actually mean.

~ Lad 2

#dreamsmp analysis #dsmp analysis #wilbursoot #tommyinnit #dream #mcyt #rp #dreamsmp #dsmp #ask to tag #(also from lad 2) by the way if i said anything stupid here please tell me #i don’t want to speak over people who are actually affected by stuff like this #and this is just my perspective as someone who Has privilege so i may be tone deaf #my view of prejudices like this is distant because they don’t affect me directly #my opinion is just that it’s not great to have these sorts of hot takes #about l’manburg if you’re going to ignore the stuff they faced #and that stories of americans opressing people are very common #so pushing charged labels onto characters without actually being right?#probably bad #considering how important the actual issues are #and how what people are saying may impact how they see real situations?#because a lot of dsmp analysis ends up being just political analysis #and opinions bleed over #americans have done a lot of crap #and i don’t want to put blame on the people they oppress #it is Fictional Block Game Story but like #still #but again i’m a white american so #if i’m wrong please let me know i am very willing to be criticized on things like this #thanks guys

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astrallines · 4 years

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The Crumbling Tower of 2020

Notes on the Triple Conjunction

Hello friends. What follows is a short introduction to the incredibly rare and historical astrological conditions of the year 2020. This was written with the intention of accessibility first and foremost; I believe it’s important that people have some idea of this moment in a historical context, and the tools to evaluate the themes and stories that are emerging currently and in the near future. To my eyes astrology is at its most useful when it is neither prescriptive nor prophetic. It is foremost a tool of psychological midwifery; reading the meaning of the world and its events.

So it’s in my interest to be painting in broad strokes. If you want concrete predictions or exact dates for orbs of conjunction now and in history, then there is a vast field of mundane astrology for you to Google. The myths I’m unfolding here are only for context and consideration—I hope you find them helpful.

Also, there will be a major western bias in my evaluation of history, which sucks, but that’s the milieu I grew up in and can speak to, and it remains the information most easily available. But of course astrological conditions are affecting the entire world. We can still trace the vibe through western examples.

Our Axial Moment There are two incredibly rare astrological events happening this year. One event is the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the sign of Aquarius. These two planets come together routinely, mechanically, every 20 years. But the rhythm of their waltz is such that each meeting takes place in signs of the same element for 200 years at a time. So when they conjoin in Aquarius, in the last weeks of 2020, that will be their first time together in an air sign since the 14th century.

Since 1802, all of their conjunctions have been in earth signs. (Much more on the significance of this later, but some may already notice this 200 period’s coincidence with the industrial revolution and the age of capital). In the 200-odd years before 1802, they would join every time in fire signs—and for the 200 years before that, water. One waltz more brings us back to the 1300s and 1200s, the previous epoch of air signs. Returning to the present day, we should realize that since an age like this persists for two centuries at a time, it is essentially impossible for someone who witnesses such a transition, to have ever even known anyone who witnessed the previous transition. That is, the 100 year old person in December 2020—even if they had, as a newborn, shared a breath with a 100 year old person—would not reach far back enough in history to have even a dim, second-hand knowledge of the epoch of fire (1603-1801). These periods are effectively the frame edges; the curtains around the drama of the world stage.

Rare as it is, the other historical aspect of the year is much rarer: the fact that Saturn and Jupiter will also conjoin Pluto in Capricorn before they dance their first step together in Aquarius. Though these 3 will never occupy the exact same degree together, they will come very close, on and off throughout 2020. Of course a triple conjunction of planets will always occur in more unpredictable intervals than any pair of planets because of the 3 separate orbits. Famously—well, famous among astrologers—it last happened in the sign of Capricorn during the founding year of the city of Babylon, 1894 BCE.

History of the Elemental Epochs Because the Jupiter-Saturn synodic cycle is so regular, and because we didn’t know about outer planets til the 18th century, the dance of these two planets through the elemental stations is by far the oldest astrological tool for determining epochal periods. It has long been assumed to be the basic attitudinal/affective backdrop of the zeitgeist. (Now that we know about Pluto, we have a new vibecheck every 12 years! But isn’t it funny that generations didn’t have names until we noticed Pluto in 1930?)

I would be remiss not to mention that there are overlaps between these periods. For instance, Jupiter and Saturn were briefly conjunct in an air sign (Libra) for a few months in 1981. So toward the end of each epoch, humanity gets a little multi-month preview of the coming age. 1981 and the transitional period is a whole other topic in itself, but that’s all I’ll say here.

Even though these elemental ages have been observed for so long, we don’t have a ton of historical examples to draw upon to get a sense of the nature of a particular epoch. As for the air age that we’re entering into, we can refer to the high medieval period as the last instantiation, but to get a third example we have to go into history 6 centuries before that! Soon the world starts to look so different from the current day, that we have to stretch the imagination that much farther. So let’s just a get a brief summary of the previous cycle through the elements.

Earth 1802-2020

This is the epoch we are still in as I write this. It began during the industrial revolution, and the earth themes are undeniable. Human begins have had a resolutely atomic understanding of the universe; materialism is rampant; and it feels that capital and capitalism are catalysts of most human drama. We take things literally and concretely: instead of speculating about other realms, we want to drive our spaceships to big slabs of land like the moon and Mars. We have discovered how to build and make so much STUFF!

Fire 1603-1801

This period is famous for the enlightenment and the French and American revolutions. The time of great sparks! Reason, brilliance, luminance ... self-validation and self-determination. This is really when human beings began to appreciate the value of the idiosyncrasy of a particular thinker. “THIS dude’s contribution” etc. Rights, laws, freedom, were all in vogue. “Here I am!” say the fire signs.

Water 1425-1602

Just as materialist scientism was born out of the liberating thought of the enlightenment, so were the insights of the enlightenment enabled by the world-broadening discoveries of the renaissance. During the water epoch, everyone was sailing everywhere, being introduced to new cultures, and the “new world” was reached by the Europeans. At home, classics of antiquity were being rediscovered and the world was broadened in that sense. Shakespeare was poppin off in a big way. The concept of the stage is essentially water; water is the idea that there is an affective component to reality at all.

Air 1226-1424

Is it a coincidence that the least widely known stage of the cycle is the one we are now entering? Or is that just the nature of history, as it fades further into the past? This period was called, in the West, the “high medieval” era. It was marked by civic demarcations that more or less persist to this day—the previous few hundred years saw constantly changing borders, but now people grouped more firmly into ethnic or national identities drawn to territories. This is also where we got chivalry and the first real rights for women in a long time. And there was the discovery of an actual social life and leisure. “Hanging out” was invented, thank God.

Reality itself received a major patch update: we invented mechanical clocks, which caused people to relate to the passage of time in a totally new way. We used to just slice up the sunrise-to-sundown period into 12 equal parts; now hours were a constant length throughout the year. Common folk had glass windows in their homes for the first time, and the elite even wore glass in front of their eyes to correct their vision. Music became much more complex, as people had more time to take it seriously and form theories. People could go to libraries; for the first time ever there were more books in cities than in monasteries. Cities were finally the place to be. We invented the compass, the game of chess, and the printing press. The astrolabe, like the compass, allowed us to orient ourselves to something that was formerly hopelessly abstract (the stars). Most of this cool shit came from the Arab world, which was flourishing.

Air Epoch 2.0 That’s the historical overview. Obviously there is much, much more there for any anthropologist or history of philosophy ass person. But we are beginning to see some idea of the relation between the qualities symbolized by the elements and the respective periods. Now we can begin a more informed speculation.

The movement from the previous earth age to the previous air age seems to be one of dramatically more complex social relations. Less emphasis on the riches of a kingdom, and more emphasis on its culture, civility, and sophistication. Abstract things became the treasures. As we look to our own incoming air epoch, it is easy to envision a world that places more emphasis on networks instead of objects. Social media, gig economy, and blockchain all appear to be prefigurations of this. In terms of philosophy, it no longer seems very radical to conceptualize oneself as part of a universe whose essential composition is not defined by particles (nouns) but relations and processes (verbs).

What Was Babylon? I ain’t no student of ancient culture. Until a few months ago, I didn’t even know Babylon was where Iraq is. Of course I think it would behoove all of us to research as much as possible the previous instantiation of this astrological aspect, but I also think it’s valid to speak about its cultural impact through a layman’s osmosis. As far as I can tell: what is Babylon best remembered for? The miraculous hanging gardens, the Tower of Babel, and the law code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi’s code, inscribed onto a stele about a century after the founding of Babylon is celebrated as the first known written laws, some 190 edicts long—and by the estimation of modern scholars, supremely humanitarian for its time. What is the modern equivalent of the ancient innovation of codified laws? Hard to fathom, but something for us to consider as the new age dawns.

More famously, there is the story of the Tower of Babel. A persistent image of human hubris, even today people respond to the tower motif as a symbol of defiance of God or of nature, and it is routinely invoked when artists and pundits comment on the ecological folly of industrial enterprise. Human beings tried to use their intellectual capacities to reach the position of God. Without reading the Bible, I can tell you that the punishment for this was the diversification of languages. All of a sudden people couldn’t speak to each other, because there were so many ways to speak.

Today we take for granted the many languages of human beings, so what is the modern equivalent of this event? Taken as a metaphor, the variation of languages could represent a variation of worldview. Styles of interfacing with reality. Because the element of air is so closely associated with concepts like perception, the structuring of thought, communication, and virtual realities, we might imagine that in the new age we will begin to understand just how deeply diversified our mechanisms of interpreting reality are. Phenomenology seems like a pretty fringe field in our current world, but AI is certainly not; and content creators have increasingly brought phenomenological themes to the center of their work over the last couple decades. Just as the previous air epoch (12/1300s) saw the advent of movable type, perhaps we will soon develop novel means of recording our impressionistic realities.

Finally, Babylon was host to the famous hanging gardens. Supposedly built by king Nebuchadnezzar to please his wife who missed the natural beauty of Iran, it is still unclear whether this wonder of the world ever existed in physical reality. In any case, the story is relevant: a ruler, in the midst of tremendous infrastructural expansion, and with it the inevitable subjugation of nature, finds that his greatest cultural influence across the centuries is ecological restoration. Looking at these three legacies of Babylon together is rather interesting: the law code stele, though purportedly divine in origin, is unquestionably real to our materialist sensibilities—you can go and see it. The Tower of Babel, taken from the Bible, was probably not real in the same fundamental way; though there was without question a great ziggurat in Babylon, the Biblical account is not literal. The hanging gardens is the most mythological. So between the three we have different concentrations of myth and historical fact.

Second Second Life I write this in the first few weeks of social isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. There is much more to be said about the connection between this unprecedented social condition and the imminent radical astrology—maybe the subject of some other essay. But off the dome, we can see plainly the defaulting of Capricornian things: governments, businesses, economies, and social infrastructure. Without much of a choice, we are withdrawing our energy from the material to which we are accustomed. We’re cooped up in our houses, where the merciful currents of the internet continue to draw us on, to operate in cyberspace as normal. New social functions and vocabularies are already emerging as we are forced to reconsider the online networks that have seemed so toxic for the last few years. People find themselves operating “peer to peer” out of necessity. Some “inessential” products may no longer be available on amazon, but your neighbor might have them. More importantly, people are reaching out to each other for nothing more than human contact. We’ve been wringing our hands about the importance of human connection, but capitalism—through spectacle or stranglehold—has drawn us away from putting it first.

Social service is (along with certain essential aspects of the internet) ruled by Aquarius. Saturn, governor of concern, has already ingressed into this sign, but will retrograde back out in a few months; and then at the end of the year, it will be joined by Jupiter, who greases the wheels, expands the potentiation of Saturn’s concern, and affords prosperity to those who take social service seriously. And together they will inaugurate the new age.

#astrology #mundane astrology #great conjunction #jupiter #saturn #pluto #jupiter-saturn conjunction #saturn-Pluto conjunction #tower of babel #babylon #coronovirus #capricorn #aquarius #air epoch #elemental ages #jupiter saturn synodic cycle #triple conjunction

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laura-elizabeth91 · 4 years

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"Theresa May's Style: Put Your Head Down and Get to Work" By STEVEN ERLANGER for the New York Times JULY 13, 2016 LONDON — Her beloved father, an Anglican vicar, died in a car crash when she was 25, after she had been married only a year, and her mother, who had multiple sclerosis, died a few months later. For Theresa May, a cherished only child, the shock was devastating. It brought her even closer to her husband, Philip, two years younger, whom she had met at Oxford, at a Conservative Party disco. They bonded over cricket and silly university debates, like the one where Philip induced her to speak for the motion “That sex is good… but success is better.” Both became bankers, and Ms. May threw herself into the Conservative politics that had entranced her since the age of 12, when she liked to argue with her father and he asked her, in order to maintain neutrality in his parish, not to parade her Tory colors in public. “Politics captured me,” Ms. May said in 2014. “That sounds terribly trite,” she said, but “I wanted to make a difference, I wanted to be part of the debate.” On Wednesday, Ms. May, 59, became Britain’s prime minister, the last adult standing after other senior members of her party — the clever younger men from Britain’s elite schools, like her predecessor, David Cameron — schemed each other out of contention. For Ms. May, only Britain’s second female prime minister, it is a job she never publicly acknowledged wanting, until Mr. Cameron, bluff and self-confident, pushed his luck once too often,lost the referendum on keeping Britain in the European Union and quit. Ms. May, who had been home secretary, is considered “a safe pair of hands,” not flashy and even dull, who seems to be a candidate of continuity. But the country’s dire circumstances may demand more. And Ms. May, a traditional economic and social conservative in many respects, has signaled a desire to give her party a new focus on the need to build a fairer society. With Britain deeply divided over its decision to leave the European Union, its place in the world in flux, its unity threatened by calls for Scottish independence and its economy at risk, the times may require that Ms. May be both steady and bold. Her six-year tenure at the Home Office showed her to be a tough operator and put her in charge of a number of flash-point issues. She demanded police reforms to reduce racial profiling. She helped push through surveillance policies that had to balance fears of terrorism against civil liberties and confronted public pressure to reduce immigration, failing to meet government targets for doing so. If sometimes at odds with Mr. Cameron’s inner circle — she was a quiet critic of the government’s budget austerity — she nonetheless built a reputation as smart and competent. Damian Green, who worked for her as Home Office minister until 2014, said that “Theresa doesn’t do verbiage, doesn’t do speeches for the sake of making speeches. One of her virtues is that when she says something today she means it tomorrow.” But she will have to bind a badly torn party in which she has won esteem but few close friends. She will also have to juggle competing priorities in negotiating the withdrawal from the European Union under the watchful eye of Brexit supporters who remain wary of her commitment to their cause. Even though she publicly if tepidly supported remaining in Europe out of loyalty to Mr. Cameron, saying it would be best for the nation’s security, at heart “she is a Euroskeptic,” said Catherine Meyer, a former treasurer of the Conservative Party and a friend of the Mays’. “When she says Brexit means out, she means it.” While respected within the European Union as a tough and unpretentious negotiator, Ms. May will have to find the right balance between more controls on immigration that the voters demanded and at least partial access, if she can manage it, to the single market of the European Union. Friends say that her early religious upbringing — she is an Anglican but went to a Roman Catholic school — has given Ms. May a moral base, a steady personality and a feeling for the disadvantaged. “Her background has shaped her into somebody who is not going to feel sorry for herself or blame others for her mistakes, and who finds solace in moving forward, not to sit but to fight,” said Ms. Meyer, who worked with Ms. May on a charity for abducted children. A young woman who hunched her shoulders at school to seem less tall has grown into a proud master of her responsibilities. She lives for her work and her husband, a well-off investment banker, and their time together in their neat house in Sonning-on-Thames, in Berkshire, in the heart of her Maidenhead constituency, a village she shares with better-known types like the guitarist Jimmy Page and George and Amal Clooney. She likes to cook and owns more than 100 cookbooks, and will likely be glad that the Camerons took the heat for remodeling the ancient kitchen at 10 Downing Street. Mr. Cameron valued her workaholic talents, naming her Home Office secretary, one of the four senior cabinet posts, only the second woman to hold the job. Wary of her quiet ambition and wanting to protect his own favorite, George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, he never promoted her further. But he did not demote her, either, even as she failed to deliver on one of the government’s key pledges, to curb immigration. She was famous for fighting her corner, knowing her subject and keeping clear of the Cameron “chumocracy.” Ms. May is polite but not chummy, works late and does not hang around Parliament’s bars. Her lack of a “set of friends” was considered one of her great liabilities in the race to succeed Mr. Cameron, said Crispin Blunt, a Conservative member of Parliament who is one of her supporters. “There wasn’t an army of mates for her,” he said, but it allows her now to make appointments to her government on the basis of her own priorities and assessments. “In government, sometimes it’s difficult to be a woman surrounded by lots of men,” said Ms. Meyer. “Like Margaret Thatcher, she likes the company of men, but she’s capable of putting her fist down.” Ms. May was co-founder in 2005 of a group called “Women2Win,” to elect more women to Parliament and then nurture them, something that Mrs. Thatcher, the first woman to lead Britain, was often criticized for failing to do. In office, Ms. May has been rigorous, largely sticking to her brief, which she knew in depth, and not often consulting cabinet colleagues. One former minister, Kenneth Clarke, called her “a bloody difficult woman,” a description she embraced. She tends to work alone or with a small number of aides, like Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, and has a tendency to micromanage, a senior civil servant said, asking anonymity. After two failed attempts, she was elected to Parliament in 1997. In 2002, when chosen to chair the party, Ms. May gave a speech about the need to reach out to the less fortunate. “Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies,” she said. “You know what some people call us? The nasty party. I know that’s unfair, you know that’s unfair, but it’s the people out there that we have to convince.” In 2014, she again earned attention for taking on the powerful police union, the Police Federation, limiting “stop and search” because of racial bias and imposing elected oversight commissions on the police. To a stunned conference of police, shesaid: “The federation was created by an act of Parliament and it can be reformed by an act of Parliament. If you do not change of your own accord we will impose change on you.” Among her most controversial acts was helping to push through a so-called “snooper’s charter,” giving the police and security services new powers in a world of digital communications and terrorism. After criticism that the measure impinged too much on civil liberties and individual rights, she agreed to some changes. Ms. May has been compared to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany – both daughters of Protestant clergymen, both with quiet, private husbands, both without children, both hardworking and rather distant. Ms. May clearly sees the similarities, including being underestimated by men. “If you look at somebody like Angela Merkel and think of what she’s actually achieved, you know, there are still people who don’t rate her, are a bit dismissive, perhaps because of the way she looks and dresses,” Ms. May said in a 2012 interview with the Daily Telegraph. “What matters is, what has she actually done? And, when you look at her abilities in terms of negotiation, and steering Germany through a difficult time, then hats off to her.” She has only rarely spoken publicly about her personal life, though it briefly became a campaign issue when one of her challengers, Angela Leadsom, seemed to suggest that she had a greater stake in Britain’s future because she has children and Ms. May does not. “You look at families all the time and you see there is something there that you don’t have,” Ms. May said in the 2012 interview with The Daily Telegraph, when asked about not having children. “You accept the hand life deals you.” Ms. May took the same attitude to her diagnosis of diabetes, for which she said she gave herself four injections a day. “Just get on and deal with it,” she said. She has made a calculated effort to show some inner life and spark by her choice of clothes, especially her kitten-heeled animal-print shoes, which the British press chronicles avidly. “You can be clever and like clothes,” she has said. “One of the challenges for women in politics is to be ourselves.” When asked on Desert Island Discs what single novel she wanted as a castaway, she answered, “Pride and Prejudice.” And her single luxury? “A lifetime subscription to Vogue.”

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woman-loving · 5 years

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some thoughts on femininity

I start off with a long quote, so the whole thing is going under a cut.

There is a scene in the film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, where the heroine’s mentor Effie Trinket is learning to adapt to her new life in the revolutionary compound of District 13. Previously an inhabitant of the wealthy Capitol area, Trinket has been forced to leave behind her old excessive style in favour of a grey jumpsuit, a uniform worn throughout the District. Cleaned of makeup and without her frilly dresses, Trinket retains only a set of bangles which she still wears and often touches wistfully. Her fellow District 13 comrades find Trinket’s attachment to these objects absurd, and she is met with derision. This response from her revolutionary companions calls to mind Germaine Greer’s assertion that “the women who dare not go outside without their fake eyelashes are in serious psychic trouble” (1970, 325). That Trinket’s affection for feminine accoutrements makes her the focus of ridicule illustrates an important conundrum. It begs the question: should we laugh and pity the Trinkets of the world “who dare not go outside” without their feminine accessories? Are Trinket’s bracelets symbolic manacles? Or should we sit awhile, and wonder why these attachments might remain in the face of strong suggestions from others that liberation can be found in throwing such objects away? This leads to the central question: how can we consider femininity in a way that best attends to people’s experiences of, and attachment to, feminine styles?

Looking to both popular and scholarly feminist commentary over history we see that feminine styles of the body are often not merely understood as the effect of an oppressive gender system, but rather are seen to perpetuate and maintain this system. So the dominant theory goes: if a woman fails to reject those bodily expectations of the gender regime, she is part of the problem. I do not wish to deny that there are norms and expectations that shape the way that we are expected to appear and present ourselves in the world. Indeed, at times this regime is a punishing one. Women are expected to put an enormous amount of energy and money into their appearance, in order to be understood as “respectable”, “beautiful”, and “sexy”. The effort required to produce feminine aesthetics is increasingly being discussed in terms of labour (Baker 2016, 52). Furthermore,successfully achieving various looks for different contexts is no easy task. To wholeheartedly celebrate the various aspects of appearance which often constitute what is recognised as “feminine” – including makeup, clothing, hairstyling, and so on – would be to deny the daily experiences of women who are compelled to conform to particular styles in both the private and the public sphere.

For these reasons, I do not wish to celebrate femininity as something that should be seen as necessarily empowering nor inherently “good”. However, I do seek to intervene in the idea that political transformation can or should be affected at the level of appearance and identity. That is to say, I argue that femininity is not necessarily disempowering, nor inherently “bad”. Those aspects of feminine styling that may for some people feel cruel or laboursome may at other times or for other people be a source of pleasure or, indeed, may be central to their sense of identity and belonging. [...]

That gender expectations are contextual and change over history and location also reveals that it is not the specific elements of what we designate as “feminine” in appearance that are innately problematic, but rather what is arduous is being compelled to conform to expectations. While women of one era might define long dresses as oppressive, another might see miniskirts in the same way depending on the specifics of the disciplinary regime at the time. Another clear example of this is currently the colour pink, which is discussed in some detail in chapter two : pink is not inherently bad, but functions today as a symbol of girlhood. While many reject pink for the gender normativity it represents, at times the debate gets mired in making pink the problem rather than seeing the real issue as the system that merely encourages the use of pink as a signifier. [...]

--Hannah McCann, Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism, and the Politics of Presentation, 2018

This is an excerpt from the introduction of a book that I was looking through, just because I was hoping it would annoy me into writing something. I have a bit of a bias against using "femininity" as a category of analysis; I fear that people are going to use this concept imprecisely, leaving it vague and relying on unspoken, preexisting connections between femininity, womanhood, and female to suggest its meaning. However, I haven't actually read much theorization on femininity or femme-ness, so I don't know for sure what this book is going to argue; I read another theoretical article on femme just before this and it seemed to be going in some interesting directions (building off other queer and feminist theorizing). But still I want to share some of the thoughts and concerns I have going into this topic, acknowledging that other people may very well be saying the same sort of thing, and that this isn't original to me.

First of all, I want to give my own, very rough working explanation of "femininity" (or at least one angle of it), which would go something like this: femininity names the quality of womanliness, or the range of physical characteristics, styles, mannerisms, interests, work, etc that are imagined to be the natural expression of womanhood. In other words, "femininity" and womanhood are tied together through an essentialist logic, one which also locates womanhood and its expression (femininity) in "the female body." (I will use "the female body" here to indicate another construction.) The reference point for all this that I'm thinking about here is specifically Western European constructions of womanhood, femininity, and the female body, and how these are constructed through race, class, ability, sexuality, and other factors.

While we've come to speak about femininity as something independent from being woman or "female"--as that which has simply been "traditionally associated" with women--I think this is the logic behind that "association." To be feminine is to be "womanly." One concern I have with using "femininity" as a analytic category is that... so long as the reference point for understanding the meaning of "feminine" is an essentialist logic of womanhood, we risk carrying over this logic uncritically, and reproducing it even where we claim to have severed it off. How can we talk about both "womanliness" as an independent expression that can be found in people of any gender and also "women" as a group that can have a full range of possible expressions?

Going back to my explanation of femininity and the broader gender logic of which its a part, another point that needs to be made is that... while ideal (meaning: white, middle-class, able-bodied, cis) women and womanliness are seen as fundamentally distinct from men and manliness, these categories are not as separate in this scheme as would appear. These values of male-man-manly and female-woman-womanly interpenetrate one another and can be quite mobile. Womanly characteristics can be found in a man; male traits identified on the female body. This mobility actually helps preserve the underlying essentialist logic. For example, we might understand a brave woman as expressing a manly characteristic, rather than questioning the notion that bravery is fundamentally male (and therefore an aberration in women) or that the real, essential man is brave. (This is touched on a little bit here, too.)

Moving on.

So, we have this introduction that starts out with considering the reception of Effie in The Hunger Games, and what Effie misses when she's in District 13, and what she's sneered at for being attached to, is identified as "femininity."

It's been a lot time since I read or watched The Hunger Games, but surely it would be accurate to say that what Effie is missing is a particular style, particular accouterments, a fashion; these are what the author here identifies as "femininity." And that's not wrong, exactly, but there are other ways of naming this. Lemme turn to a quote I saved from another book I read:

In spite of their differences in education, wealth, and social standing, most of the [Victorian] bourgeoisie resembled one another in dress, habits of speech, and deportment. Bourgeois men dressed somberly, in dark colors, avoiding any outward signs of luxury. Their clothing fit closely and lacked decoration—a symbolic adjustment to the machine age, in which elaborate dress hampered activity. It also reflected a conscious attempt to emphasize achievement-oriented attitudes, and new standards for what constituted honorable manhood. Through dress and other fashionable tastes, middle classes distinguished themselves from what they viewed as a decadent and effeminate nobility.

Bourgeois conventions regarding women’s dress were the opposite of men’s, further reinforcing gender distinctions—women’s clothing became the material symbol of male success. Extravagant amounts of colorful fabrics used to fashion huge, beribboned hoop dresses reflected the newfound wealth of the middle classes and confirmed their view of women as ornaments whose lives were to be limited to the home and made easier by servants.

--Western Civilization: Beyond Boundaries, Thomas F. X. Noble, et al., 6th ed., 2010

Ok, now this is where all my thoughts start to get scrambled together. Let's see in what order all my points will wind up.

So what appears to be happening here is the emergence of two fashion genres (to use a term from the previous femme article I read) within the white Victorian bourgeoisie. (Is that the same thing as middle class?) And these are shaped to express one of two sets of contradictory values held by the bourgeoisie. And while it's reasonable to assume that bourgeois women would also hold and reproduce these values, I expect that these social trends were largely shaped by white bourgeois men, and that both sets of values reflected their own interests. In other words, it's not that bourgeois men held one set of values and bourgeois women the other, and each were allowed to develop fashions as suited their own (singular) preferences. Rather, bourgeois men valued both somberness and display of wealth through luxury, and wished to express both, and resolved this contradiction by externalizing one of these value sets onto women. They were able to have their cake and eat it too: they could express esteemed middle-class values as a part of their manhood, while also getting the benefits of the values they decried: extravagance, excess, luxury, ornamentation--all foisted onto women, whose fashions were imagined as deriving from an essential womanly disposition that naturally gravitated to such qualities. I.e. women's femininity.

AND LEAST THAT'S HOW I'M READING THIS. I haven't looked into the development of these fashions beyond the quote from the book. So, if that's correct.

The use of The Hunger Games to illustrate the reception to women's attachment to "feminine" styles is odd, because the fashions of the Capitol must also be sharped by class values. Popular fashion in the Capitol appears to be characterized by exaggeration, excess, and flamboyance, a display of luxury which resonates with what the Capitol represents in the series.

HOWEVER. The Capitol does not seem to have markedly distinct genres of fashion for men and women. Let me qualify that. Just looking at these pictures, the few men who appear are less... excessive, but still notably flamboyant. (Two more examples.) It's been quite a while since I read the books or watched the movies, so I don't remember exactly how gender appeared to be constructed in the Capitol. But I'd posit that the difference in degree of excess between men and women here results from the fact that these fashions are built on the base of real-world fashions, where those for men and women have had different trajectories. Perhaps we could say, though, that the same basic concept lies behind all fashion in the Capitol, and imagine that the spirit behind Suzanne Collins' vision of the Capitol might be more "ideally" represented by a world where the forms of Capitol fashion were not gender-specific.

In that case, extravagant fashion is not specifically womanly. It might make more sense to speak of Effie not as missing the accouterments of "femininity," but more specifically the accouterments of a fashion characterized by exaggeration, excessive ornamentation, or however we might describe it. These fashions might be intimately tied to her identity and sense of embodiment, without primarily being understood as an expression of a uniquely womanly quality. Where, then, does the concept of "femininity" fit into it?

Moving on from The Hunger Games, the suggestion I'd like to make is that, rather than using a vague notion of "femininity," we attempt to be more precise in naming the contents of "femininity." By utilizing categories like "extravagance" or "flamboyance" (or perhaps other, better terms), we can uproot the characteristics that make up "femininity" from their presumed location in womanly nature. We can connect them as well to “manly” expressions of these same qualities, and perhaps note a range of similarities and differences in how they are socially received depending on the gender, race, class, etc of the subject in which they appear. This is not to say that we should ignore how certain things are gendered, or how people do in fact adopt certain styles as a way to express or embody their gender. This can/should still be part of the analysis. But expanding the repertoire of categories used to name what we mean by "femininity" might help us avoid over-determining the significance of gender, which can be a pitfall when the subjects under consideration are viewed as markedly gendered. (I complained about an example of this.)

(I suppose I'm basically describing a method of analysis that evacuates the category of femininity. I remember once, in a discussion of Buddhism, the concept of non-self (anatta) was illustrated by saying "a flower is made up entirely of non-flower parts." In this case, "femininity" or womanliness is made up entirely non-woman(ly) parts. So what are those parts?)

I also want to comment on something McCann said in the last paragraph of that first quote. She said that the elements designated as "feminine" are not innately problematic, but become so when they are compelled to be adopted. I’d agree that it’s a problem when these elements are compulsory (especially if they tend to require greater time, labor, expense, and self-monitoring to embody). However, the contents of "femininity" may in fact be problematic within the social context in which they are developed. Returning to that second quote, the ornateness of bourgeois women's fashion was problematic in its own right because it contradicted another, more centrally affirmed set of bourgeois values.

Now, I'm not sure what is the best way to name the characteristics that are identified as "feminine," but one common complaint against certain "feminine" clothing or processes is that they are impractical and unnecessary. And when women specifically are compelled to adopt styles that are impractical for a wider range of situations, it makes sense to complain about that. However, what may be needed to defuse tensions around "femininity" is not just a rethinking of the meaning or value of womanhood (e.g. what women "should" look like), but also a rethinking of the value of “impracticality.” A rethinking of forms of expression (and the labor they entail) that serve no purpose other than meeting an aesthetic or bodily goal, one which may be attained at the expense of practicality, efficiency, or frugality.

At the same time, even here we can't look at this question outside the interlocking context of sexism, misogyny, racism, classism, et al, since these determine which forms of expression that might in fact be impractical (toward a certain goal) actually get identified as impractical or unnecessary. It just goes to show how multiple approaches are needed, since these phenomena are complex.

Fin.

#femininity

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weaselle · 5 years

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white people

Hey, I’m white, and if you’re white (but hello and welcome to the show if you’re not) I just gotta say Can we just come clean and admit what this world has been through so we can find a way to move forward? As far back as I can go, the great patter goest thus: there were people, and civilizations; then, a wave or three of pale people from the North or Sea moved in and started a campaign of conquer, replace, subjugate. Sometimes exterminate. Like, the people that did it to the Maya were just the descendants of the people who did it to the original culture of Spain. They sort of slosh around Europe for a while and then it gets harder to trace, but moving backwards though time they basically swirl around the caspian sea for a bit, and around three and a half thousand years ago, steal most of India from the darker “Naga” tribes (some tribes of which were associated with snakes - there’s a heavy eagle versus snake thing that goes back further than our records). At some point they hit Egypt and Greece. And then further back, it’s like there’s waves that spread through China and Japan (pushing, I think, a more gentle wild/natural pale group with red hair both directions out, out onto the furthest islands.) So you see them destroy the Jomon who have art so similar to African and Aboriginal Australian cultures, and after that there’s like, a going native period, where they mix in and become their own separate people, like the Ainu (who have physical characteristics that overlap with modern Russians but cultural practices that overlap with the Maori other tribes of New Zealand and surrounding islands- who have red haired people among them btw) and then around 1200AD another wave comes through Japan and just about wipes out the Ainu. ANYway, the people who did in the native tribes of the American Continent (our ancestors) were just the people whose ancestors had done in the tribes of France and Spain and Ireland and England and Sweden. And they were just the people whose ancestors had done in the tribes of India and Greece and ... ... I’m pretty sure it goes back at leas as far as the Neanderthal (so, some 40 to 50 thousand years or more) buncha pale ass motherfuckers been pouring out of central Eurasia somewhere in waves and fucking up everyone else’s shit. (not an indictment of all modern inhabitants of those areas, but also not ignoring that some of this pattern has continued through the present). Like, I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty - I didn’t personally do it. You didn’t do it. And white people certainly don’t have a monopoly and war and conquering and subjugating. But we have to like, be honest about the fact that it all happened. And that the face of humanity on this planet is still suffering because of how it happened. just, be aware and honest of things like how most of the European countries we all clamor to copy got the wealth and power necessary to give their citizens that free healthcare and free school and a firmly “first world” general public lifestyle through plundering and subjugating and enslaving African and Middle Eastern and Asian countries. And maybe, if you get an opportunity while you struggle to survive the dystopian reality resulting from the actions of those same trying-their-best-the-fucked-up-bastards ancestors of ours, push the pendulum back the other way. Call out racism when you see it, advocate for socio-political change. Acknowledge the 45 thousand year bias you are raised to not even notice, and try to see it in yourself; unlearn it. The truth is important. My notes on it here are imprecise, unsourced, but the truth I’m trying to point out is worth considering. Look into it yourself. Ask who lived there before the Roman Empire. Who lived there before the Ancient Greeks. Who lived there before, and what happened to them? There is an old, old pattern. We have to face it and move forward away from repeating or perpetuating it.

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allbeendonebefore · 6 years

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An Incomplete List of Hapo’s Vic Picks

I took some books out of the library over the summer to read up and supplement my Victoria Knowledge (tm) while i was here working here - now that I’m leaving the island again I’ve begun to compile them for your viewing pleasure.

Here in no particular order are my vic headcanons for @orcanadian to do with as she pleases xD I provide no citations but can clarify which things come from books and which things come from experience etc etc. Again the bias here is I pick things that are interesting/funny to me and things which I believe fit with her character as has been presented. Also remember that my default for comparison tends to be Ed first, Cal second, and then my impressions of other cities.

CHILDHOOD STUFF

- the number one thing that sticks out to me after reading edmonton/calgary history is how absurdly aristocratic Victoria is. In a north american sense she’s outrageously sure of herself and confident in her supposed god-given blessings and natural talents and has been so since she was young - in a european sense she’s ridiculously quaint in a kind of muddy, low class way.

- so on the one hand while she is a Lady (tm) and will only settle for the best things, she’s also the sort of kid who will appall her guardians by digging in the dirt and doing the gardening Herself.

- I get the feeling that despite beginning as an HBC fort (read: HBC retirement home), HBC had less the interior/mainland understanding (”here before christ”) and a little more of the American understanding (”hated british company”). Not that she would Ever stoop to allowing herself to be called an American, and it took her a Very long time to warm up to the idea of being called a Canadian as the people she met from Ontario and Nova Scotia during the gold rushes didn’t quite suit her idea of decent companions. Islander first, through and through.

- as a kid she spent so much time trying to help create a place she hadn’t really any actual concept of and for the longest time was heavily resistant to anything that didn’t fit her vision. Now as an adult, while the remnants of that particular brand of colonialism and imported class divides are still present, she’s making a very particular effort to present herself as an international and conscious person. (She’s not, exactly, and is still very Basic White Girl (tm) in a lot of things, but she really is trying, especially where indigenous relationships are concerned)

RELATIONSHIPS

- her relationship with the rest of the island and the mainland as a kid was nothing short of princess to peasant. Her attitude pushed New Westminster (Vancouver’s predecessor) to become adamantly pro-US annexation first and then adamantly pro-Confederation second only a little spitefully, and Victoria’s dependence on Nanaimo’s coal ended up radicalizing the workers. After the turn of the century, she seems to have settled down and mellowed in her relationships, more or less happy with her hold on the political reigns of the province.

- While her relationship with Van Man had quite a rough start, she’s sort of come to accept their respective roles. In the beginning she seemed to be more pissed that he had taken the name of *her* island than she was annoyed by his economic dominance of the province, and her prior relationship with New Westminister seems to have briefly been directed at Vancouver, reaching peak intensity when Canada revealed that maybe building a railway across the Georgia Strait to the island wasn’t feasible after all.

- Upon acquiring the capital status, Vic started to settle into the idea that /maybe/ they were finally being treated *fairly* and while Van Man wasn’t her *equal* so to speak he could at least learn a thing or two from her guidance. Van Man just accepts this because he knows he can physically lift her, tuck her in, and lock her in her house if she gets sick.

- Will not let you forget that she is /technically/ the oldest city in Western Canada. Absolutely acts like it and is always ready to dispense Wisdom (tm) even if she doesn’t actually have the experience or knowledge to back it up.

- Despite being closer to the Edge of all things, she’s not a particularly outward looking person even when she pretends to be. Most of her contact with the outside world is actually through Vancouver or through gossip, she remains quite isolated and she’s quite alright with that. Also had more of a historical aversion to Seattle/California than perhaps Vancouver did (since she viewed Washington, Oregon etc. as belonging to her and because she wasn’t particularly fond of all the sketchy flannel-wearing Californians turning up in the mid 19th century rushes)

- Victoria is actually a committee of 17 separate municipalities, 4 of which are perhaps particularly important to take note of. The ‘four towns in a city’s trench coat’ are as follows:

- VICTORIA: the vic chick herself, seat of power in the province, the mastermind of Vancouver Island, and the hip and trendy downtown.

- OAK BAY: the heart of old British culture and class divides, highly resistant to development of any sort, and self proclaimed “original” hollywood north, Oak Bay is a state of mind more than a place who’s gender is tweed and mostly goes downtown for the Irish Linen store.

- ESQUIMALT: was going to be Victoria’s original location but had crap farmland and no fresh water, so became the military and naval base instead. Vic had a romanticized view of a sailor who would come and sweep her away from the island in her youth but...

- SAANICH: i suppose the chill and friendly popular neighbour of the four and perhaps the most tenuous sense of identity, but loves hiking and stargazing and being outside in general. Shares the university and a local cryptid with Oak Bay.

- Quebec City is kind of her secret senpai - she essentially demanded the CPR build her a hotel on par with Chateau Frontenac (which they did, begrudgingly) and she’s the only one so far this side of Canada to be able to enjoy a tin of Samuel’s chocolate fondue with her fresh garden produce.

- Cal is a CONSTANT visitor to the island to the point that it’s even more common to see Calgary Flames or Stamps junk than it is to see Vancouver or Seattle teams. Vic is “a playground for rich Calgarians”. They may be on opposite ends of many political debates, but they are both similar in personality in a traditional/romantic/conservative way.

- She also has a bit of an interesting (if mildly condescending) relationship with Hally - polar opposite in attitudes and class backgrounds, but share historical, cultural and geographical similarities enough to at least be able to work together and chat a fair bit.

- “Hey Whitehorse, remember that ship I sent you?” “Ahh... about that...”

CURRENT QUIRKS

- Old lady at heart. Uses facebook to share pictures of visitors to her yard, post old memes directly to people’s walls, and like Every Selfie before inquiring after the person depicted on the public comments. Thinks she’s the wine mom when she’s actually the tea granny, and her big social excursions are usually with her bridge group/the Greater Vic Committee.

- Loves to cook with stuff she grows herself and always has herbs at the ready, though she’s quite particular about who she cooks for or takes out for dinner. Also has a serious sweet tooth when it comes to tea time and candy/chocolates.

- She can actually be a little reserved when it comes to hospitality at times even though she’s extremely friendly and outgoing. Doesn’t actually like people staying in her house for extended periods free of charge... remember that BC stands for Bring Cash. That said, she will absolutely be over-generous with weed and offer a complete stranger a joint five minutes after chatting with them.

- Will talk with you, unsolicited, about anything. Friendly to the point that a quiet brusque prairie person like me will be totally caught off guard. Will continue talking as you’re trying to bike up a 45 degree angle.

- Her manner in some cases can come across as overly blunt or even imperious in that I’m Old So Of Course I Know Better Way and condescending without actually realizing it (”I was cleaning out my attic and found these old photographs I took- they are not the best photos but I’m sure they’ll be adequate to decorate your house”).

- Despite maturity beyond her years, she’s actually got a really good grasp on cool/retro trends and interesting food. While she does tie into the generic maple-washed Canadiana that tourists expect, she’s also very good at putting her own flair on things and emphasizing her own interests (ex. especially comics and games).

- Really into old cars and trucks. Like it’s kind of worrying but considering all the retired people she lives with and the cost of driving to the mainland via BC Ferries (which she h a t e s), it kind of makes sense. A collector.

- Staying out past 9 pm on a weekend is kind of a big deal for her. Also never goes Anywhere in a hurry. So chill and laid back about Everything (but will launch into a passionate rant about how invasive species are actually Necessary Okay or When Will The Deer Stop Eating My Plants?!) no matter how high she is.

- Regardless of how she identifies herself, Vic is extremely queer friendly. Romance of any orientation absolutely warms her heart and she has a particularly strong trans community and archive. She can perhaps be a little nosy about things, but can be really accepting despite her old/conservative stereotype.

- Her favourite holiday (perhaps next to Victoria Day) is Christmas. She goes ALL OUT on lights and decorations every year.

- While she might be more famous for her penchant for yoga and paddleboarding or sailing and other such individual and relaxed recreational activities, she did beat the Montreal Canadiens for the Stanley Cup before the NHL even formed. Not that she brags, but she does carry a lot of smugness around with her and that’s just one more thing to be smug about.

- Has an umbrella and KNOWS how to use it as both shield and sword. Have at thee, weather and disreputable politicians! Also will absolutely defend an oak tree in her yard with firearms.

Perhaps more will be added later but that’s what I think of.��

#projectcanada cities #pc: victoria #hapo rambles #hapo reads canadian history #pc headcanon

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your-dietician · 3 years

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Is Germany nailing diverse and inclusive entertainment? | Film | DW

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/entertainment/is-germany-nailing-diverse-and-inclusive-entertainment-film-dw/

Is Germany nailing diverse and inclusive entertainment? | Film | DW

“Why kiss a frog when you could kiss a princess,” goes the tagline for “Princess Charming,” the self-proclaimed first lesbian reality dating show in the world that is being aired on the German streaming platform TVNOW. Modeled after The Bachelor, the show has several lesbian women vying for the affections of one woman. And for gay men, there’s the show Take Me Out: Boys, Boys, Boys to the same effect.

And then we also have the Heidi Klum-produced-and-hosted show Germany’s Next Topmodel 2021, which features trans model Alex Mariah Peter as its latest winner and Druck, a YouTube series on teenagers in Berlin that aims to represent different ethnic groups in the German capital. It would appear that German TV reflects the kind of pluralism that the country is known for around the world.

Even in the less agile world of cinema, there’s been a steady trend toward greater representation: In recent years, films like Türkisch für Anfänger (2012) — which was spun off from a TV series — and Fack ju Göhte (2013) have also tried to reflect Germany’s changing social structures. But is all this enough?

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

The winner: Alex

Alex Mariah Peter from Cologne became the first transgender person in the history of the show to win the competition. “Being different is much more normal than we admit to ourselves,” said the 23-year-old, who barely broached the subject of inclusion throughout the season. Speaking about future plans following the victory, the winner said, “First of all, I’m going to get a schnitzel to eat.”

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

A gender-sensitive avatar

“Inclusion” is now a global catchphrase, and the show also brought it into focus by adding a ‘*’ to its logo — a symbol for diffuse gender roles. Women who were previously marginalized or left out because they were different could now present themselves on GNTM. Refugees, curvy women and transgenders — all got a chance under the spotlight.

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

Curvy is beautiful

Ukrainian-born Dascha has been living in Germany since she was five and says she was bullied for most of her life. That’s why she didn’t just want to win but also make an important statement: “I want to be an ideal and support people who are bullied.” The confident 21-year-old weighs 85 kilos (187 pounds).

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

Living the dream

In 2015, Soulin and her family fled Syria and arrived in Germany via Turkey. The 20-year-old was all teary-eyed while modeling for a jeans brand: “I am the girl who could not achieve her dreams. Now I’m here and living my dream.” Soulin is now a model and made it to third place on GNTM.

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

Small is beautiful

At 1.68 meters (5 ft. 6.1 inches), Romina is hardly someone you would call “short,” but aspirants for GNTM need to be at least 1.76 meters tall. Romina had a very natural look for the show but earlier, she copied stars like Kylie Jenner and even got botox injected into her lips. Now she wants to support young girls who blindly follow social media trends.

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

Beauty beyond skin color

Sara Nuru’s parents immigrated from Ethiopia, and she says she was the first Black baby to be born at a hospital in the town of Erding in Bavaria. She was also the first Black model to win GNTM in 2009. Nuru has gone places since then and is now involved with developmental projects in her parents’ home country.

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

Heidi Klum’s ‘circus for models?’

“Germany’s Next Top Model – by Heidi Klum” has been on air since 2006 with the supermodel as its host. For decades, its catwalks only displayed mostly white, slim and tall women with long legs. Transgenders, small-sized women or those with curves had no chance of walking on the ramp.

Transgender person wins ‘Germany’s Next Topmodel’

Physical beauty is skin-deep

Heidi Klum and GNTM boast loyal fans among many Germans, especially young girls, who idolize the show and its models. But critics say that teenage girls often copy anorexic models on GNTM, which sends out the message that beauty is more important than education. This year as well, feminists protested the sexualization of female bodies on the show.

Author: Suzanne Cords

German popular culture seems to be getting more inclusive, at least when it comes to acknowledging the presence and existence of LGBTQ individuals and of people from different ethnic backgrounds. But until now, television and entertainment in general have primarily stuck to stereotypes when portraying such minorities.

And there has been little public discussion on the various dimensions pertaining to diversity that issues like inclusion in society and �� by consequence — the representation of minorities in television and entertainment generally should entail.

Too Turkish to be German?

“You can see that homosexuals, transsexuals and others are indeed represented in German television. Germany is much more liberal than other countries,” says actor Dean Baykan, who was born in Germany to Turkish parents. Compared to Germany, other European countries like Hungary, for example, have been very strict in their punitive attitude towards homosexuality, with a recently tabled law there practically outlawing the public representation of lifestyles that don’t fall in line with so-called traditional family values.

“But while Germany is open in some ways, in other ways it’s actually more conservative,” Baykan continues. “For example, foreigners or those with a foreign background are not taken seriously in feature films or in serious acting projects.”

Actor Dean Baykan has missed out on many ‘meaty’ roles

Baykan himself explains how he once almost scored a major role in a popular crime series on a German TV channel — but only almost. “I made it to the final round,” he said, adding that he feels that his Turkish background may have been the reason for producers deciding against him — despite the fact that he has a western first name. Whether his ethnic background was a dealbreaker or not may never be known, but actors like Baykan feel that they are not being considered for certain roles not because of an apparent lack of talent but rather because casting directors prefer when they are reduced to representing stereotypes.

‘Drug dealers, criminals and weaklings’

Filmmaker Deiu Hao Do agrees with that sort of assessment. The son of Chinese minority immigrants from Vietnam is part of the project Vielfalt im Film (diversity in film), and represents the Berlin Asian Film Network (BAFNET).

“You have Black people selling drugs, Muslims being cast as criminals, Asian women playing weak characters … But there is much more complexity to these ethnic groups, and these also need to be represented,” he told DW.

In a recent survey conducted by Vielfalt im Film, 5,500 participants said they found that such clichés were being perpetuated by the industry. Nearly 88% said that Arabs were usually represented in stereotypical ways on German television. The number was nearly 83% for Muslims in general, nearly 75% for Asians and 56% for Jews, as anti-Semitism is on the rise across many parts of Europe once more.

Born this way

German-Nigerian actor Sheri Hagen

Furthermore, 13% said they had faced bias because of their body shape and weight, while 10% of the participants said they had experienced discrimination because of their sexual identity. The study also mentioned homosexual participants saying that they had tried to hide their sexual orientation in order to improve their chances of finding work or obtaining a certain role in a film or show.

Earlier this year, 185 actors in Germany publicly announced in a newspaper article that they identified as “different” and that it was time for them to publicly acknowledge that they were gay, bisexual, lesbian, queer, non-binary and transsexual. They all demanded more visibility and representation in the German entertainment industry, having been pushed into hiding, ignoring or glossing over their identities.

Indeed, broadcasters themselves have been rather reluctant about addressing their actors’ sexual identities directly, even reflecting a sense of denial in some instances. German actress Ulrike Folkerts, for example, is a lesbian in real life but plays a heterosexual police officer in the crime series Tatort.

In a recent interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, she said that she had only recently been asked by the producers of the show — i.e. the regional public broadcaster SWR — to finally reveal her sexual orientation publicly. She refused, saying it was too late to do so.

185 actors revealed their sexual identites in the Süddeutsche Zeitung

Diversity = complexity?

Actor Sheri Hagen says that the concept of diversity is not just limited to having LGBTQ stars and the token person with a non-German background being featured in a show. The Lagos-born actor moved to Germany in the early 1990s. She identifies as being a German with Nigerian roots.

Hagen has acted in films like the Oscar-winning Das Leben der Anderen or the previously mentioned television crime series Tatort, and often speaks about the importance of greater inclusion in the German entertainment industry.

“Diversity for me is not just about skin color or gender, which is what the dominant thinking in the German film industry, is” she says, adding that diversity also “includes disabilities, sexual identity, weight-based discrimination, east-west discrimination — especially here in Germany — class-based differences, ethnic differences, cultural differences, skin color and more.”

Filmmaker Deiu Hao Do agrees that in this context, it is important to understand how these various dimensions of diversity and the related aspects of potential discrimination interact with each other. Fighting this sort of exclusion is central to promoting the cause of diversity, he stressed.

Deiu Hao Do: campaigning for inclusion

A sore lack of perspective

Streaming platforms have created alternative ways for filmmakers from around the world to showcase their work and reach new audiences. And while content from some parts of the world has certainly capitalized on this potential, these new opportunities haven’t translated into creating a greater amount of diverse streaming content coming from Germany.

Hagen says that Germany can learn a lot from best practices of inclusion currently employed in the British film industry, where shows like Bridgerton and a recent limited series on the life of Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, have used colorblind casting as a means to promote diversity even in period dramas.